


Qualia

by Be_eating_you



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Implied Mind Control, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Psychotropic Drugs, Reference to Rape, References to Brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:31:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Be_eating_you/pseuds/Be_eating_you
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham is released into the care of Hannibal Lecter, who has promised to aid in his rehabilitation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt from Tumblr user kayyasha:
> 
> Hannibal pushes Will over the edge into madness and can not handle him.
> 
> Will feels every angle of every kill he makes so every one is a crime of passion. He’s terrifying, he’s feral and Hannibal can’t manipulate him now that he’s aware of what the good doctor is trying to do.

Will Graham’s throat was raw as he drew several quick, hiccoughing, breaths. To him it sounded like the desperate, scared, breathing of a child waking out of a nightmare. Perhaps that was exactly what he was. A scared child… the difference was that he was incapable of waking. 

“Hannibal,” he managed to croak the name between breaths, “please.”

The other man was beside him a moment later, a warm hand resting on his back, “I am here, Will. Do you know where you are?”

Will shook his head, curling defensively despite the fact that he had asked for Hannibal’s presence. Hannibal was the only person he could trust now, the only person who seemed to have time and sympathy for him. Everyone else had slowly disappeared from his life. Jack had asked him to leave. More accurately, had threatened to have him incarcerated if he didn’t leave. Beverly Katz had visited him for a short time, along with some of the others he had worked with. Then, she stopped coming. Alana had brought Abigail a few times, then had decided that it was better for the girl if she didn’t see Will falling apart like this. She had not come on her own. Will told himself it was because of what they had shared, and that it must be too painful to watch him go through this. The little voice in the back of his mind assured him that it was her attempt to protect him from her professional interests. 

Hannibal was the only one now. He had taken Will out of the hospital, promising that he would be able to care for him privately. He promised that Will would be safe within the confines of his home, under his direct supervision. Hannibal wasn’t wrong, exactly, but Will couldn’t help but feel that he was slipping further and further from reality under the care of the good doctor. Being in Hannibal’s home wasn’t all that different from the hospital, when it came down to it. Hannibal had routines for him for “stability”. Time to take medication, time to go to bed, lights out, time to get up, time for recreation, time for therapy… everything ran on a strict schedule. Even this breakdown felt scheduled, as if Hannibal had some kind of string that he could pull and Will would feel that sick tug down in the pit of his stomach. 

Hannibal had pulled. Will had been in therapy with Hannibal, sitting in a comfortable leather chair, when he had become aware of how sweaty his palms felt. Slowly, he had looked down at his own hands. The blood seemed to be seeping from his pores, pooling in his cupped palms until it eventually leaked down his wrists and unexplainably defied gravity to coat his fingers. He could hear his own breath rattling in his ears as he had started to gasp, watching the blood trail up his arms. Then he was there, the young man who’s blood Will was covered in. Will’s hands were deep inside of his chest, pulling at bone with a force that he couldn’t even imagine. A knife appeared in his field of vision, offered courteously to him by a gloved hand from the darkness. He took it without question, using it to carve further and further into the squalling man. The sounds of pain stopped eventually, and Will was left with the slick squish of a lung beneath his grasping palm, and finally the firmness of a heart. He started to pull, and those immaculate hands in the rubber gloves reappeared, handing him another tool, running through his hair, and resting on his shoulder in quiet reassurance. 

One of the rubber-gloved hands slid across his chest, and Will felt the warm pressure of an arm follow it. An embrace. He looked down at the arm wrapped around him, watching droplets of blood smear along the plastic coating… a crime-scene suit? The knife he was holding fell out of his hand, clattering on the ground and he looked into the face of the person holding him so comfortingly… but there was nothing there. 

He woke, gasping, and cowered in the corner until Hannibal would come to him. Will could still smell the blood everywhere around him, but there was none on his hands, none on his clothes. Hannibal asked him again if he knew where he was and this time he was able to croak out that he knew he was in Hannibal’s house. The reassurance from Hannibal was comforting but sickening at the same time. It was too familiar. It was a familiarity that he wanted to deny. He tried to catch his breath, which resulted in another ragged sob. 

“What were you dreaming of, Will?” Hannibal had a way of saying his name that Will was sure was supposed to be grounding, but winded up being irritating instead. Will looked into his face, trying to ignore how desperately his mind was working to blur Hannibal’s features until it looked like Will was staring up into a skull. It wasn’t limited to Hannibal – Will had lost the ability to see faces clearly right before he had been committed. He tried to focus on the question rather than the eeriness of looking up into that face and seeing only shadows. 

“He must have been in his twenties,” Will looked back down at his own knees, “I was… clawing at him, with my bare hands, until I got a knife, at which point I started to…cut into him, to get his chest open. It--”

“It sounds like the last Chesapeake Ripper victim,” Hannibal’s hand squeezed his shoulder, “the one that Jack had you look at last. This is worrisome, Will. I thought you had moved beyond that.”

Will shook his head. There was something wrong with what Hannibal had said. The last one Jack had him look at… the sound of knives and screams, of frantic bodies moving against one another in a primal and desperate grapple for life crashed through his head, disrupting absolutely every other thought. He couldn’t even feel his own gasping breath anymore, as he got lost in the illusion of his hands, his own hands, tearing at flesh, wielding weapons, killing.

“Will,” Hannibal’s voice cut through it all, far too close to his ear, “I am going to sedate you. I’m concerned you are going to hurt yourself.”

This wasn’t unusual. Hannibal resorted to sedating him more often than not. If Will had had more of his mind together, he would have made some quip about Hannibal leaving the psychiatry behind for brain washing. But… that wasn’t what was really happening, was it? He had no grasp on reality. Hannibal was his friend, and surely wouldn’t do that. 

He sniffed, inhaling the too coppery scent of his own skin. He’d also thought that Hannibal Lecter wouldn’t hide a body for Abigail Hobbs. He forced that thought from his mind, instead focusing on the present moment. Hannibal, swabbing his skin with an alcohol wipe, pushing the needle through his skin and injecting the sedative that would finally, finally, allow him to sleep. Hannibal looked at Will for what seemed like far too long then reached out the run his fingers through Will’s damp hair. It lacked the tug of the latex glove, but it was the same gentle pressure and reassurance that had been applied in the hallucination. 

Will slumped further against the wall. Hannibal took the time to dispose of the syringe in a sharps container before he returned to Will’s room, scooping him up off the floor and walking him to the bed. He’d become adept at manipulating Will’s unconscious body, or wrangling him when he was in any number of altered states. Will was responding well to the manipulation, and was relatively easy to control with the right cocktail of drugs. Hannibal tucked him into bed and looked down at him with a distant kind of fondness.

Will Graham was decidedly not his beloved Mischa… but he would do.


	2. Chapter 2

“What does it feel like, exactly?” Hannibal’s voice was even and Will could hear the soft squeak of the chair he was sitting in as he shifted position. Will swallowed thickly. That mundane sound was so perfectly normal and so terrifyingly out of place that it just heightened the fear that was coursing through him. 

He took a breath, letting it rattle through his nose, before he replied, “I… don’t know that I can explain it. It might be one of those… qualia things. My perception of slick might not match your perception. I suppose that’s true of most things that we perceive. There’s no real way to scientifically measure the feel of a certain texture. It… it is slick and warm.”

“Tell me what you are doing.”

Will nodded. This was familiar territory. He took another shaking breath and started to talk, “At 3:32 in the morning, I come in through the basement window. It is left ajar for the cat, and slides easily. I am not worried about the noise. There are two floors between myself and the residents. I spend time going through the house, looking at the family photos, before I decide that I am ready. I walk quietly upstairs…”

Will closed his eyes and felt the sickening drop that he now associated with his particular set of talents. It was nearly a conditioned response now, an ingrained anxiety about what could happen. What would happen. He was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, looking at the couple sleeping in bed. The smaller man had his arm wrapped around the larger one’s hips, his face buried in the planes of his husband’s back. It would be more complicated, with them so close together. He slowly removed his shoes, and then walked silently across the bedroom floor. The knife glinted in the light coming through the window and he lowered it to the throat of the larger man.

He couldn’t hear the words that were coming out of his mouth. He could only feel the way that they vibrated in his throat and chest. He watched the two men startle awake, the sudden panic that went across their faces. The smaller man got off the bed as Will had (apparently) demanded. There were condoms in the trashcan by the bed, and a particular scent in the air – the fact that both men were naked further confirmed that they had been having sex earlier. Some distant part of Will’s mind that had been pushed under rebelled as he thought about these two men, woken up from their shared bed by a stranger. They had been happy. Comfortable. Then he happened. 

He happened. That was the only way to think of it. He tied the smaller man up, forcing him to sit on the ground. He wasn’t the intended target, but his presence at the scene complicated matters. Buy one get one… something inside of him was attempting humor in an effort to cope. There were so many responses that had been culled from him, or at the very least, buried. They were imperfect responses, and he was supposed to be perfect. He was loved, if he was perfect. 

The larger man was the target. He was large not entirely from body fat, but from thick muscle underneath that. If he hadn’t been terrified of what was going to happen to his husband, he could have overpowered Will. He was crying out for the other man even now, bleating the name “Anando” again and again while assuring him that it was going to be OK. 

That disconcertingly familiar and mundane squeak of a chair came again. Will was pulled back into the present moment. The larger man’s blood was on his hands. He looked at himself, aware of the plastic crime scene suit he was wearing, the latex gloves, and the scalpel clasped in his fingers. 

“This man does not deserve to live,” he hissed through his teeth, “and so I am taking what he does not deserve away. He does not deserve the loving husband that he cheats on.”

Will looked up at Anando, who was huddled in the corner. He was gagged, his hands tied behind his back. He was staring into space, looking anywhere but at the gore on the bed. There was another deep impulse inside of him, to feel pity for this man, for Anando. He had no idea what was happening to him. He probably had no idea that his husband had been cheating on him. He certainly had no idea that his husband was making clumsy attempts at stealing credit card numbers from his customers at the small winery that he worked at. That was the infraction, the action that sealed his fate. 

Will looked over his shoulder. Hannibal was sitting in a chair by the window, one leg crossed over the other. His fingers, incased in latex gloves, were knit together and hooked over his knee. Will couldn’t look away from his eyes. They seemed as if they were the only things alive in his otherwise featureless face. It seemed like so long since he had seen a feature, since he had seen something like eyes that he was absolutely stricken by them. 

The scalpel slid from his fingers and he stood up, turning back towards Hannibal, “There… something you said, it wasn’t right.”

“What wasn’t right, Will?” Hannibal’s head tilted slightly, those burning eyes remaining locked on Will. 

“It wasn’t the Chesapeake Ripper,” Will broke the fleeting eye contact, “the last murder Jack had me working. It wasn’t the Ripper. What I was seeing during our last session was too… too brutal. Uncontrolled. The Ripper’s crimes aren’t crimes of passion. They’re calculated. Cunning. That was… passion. The murderer tore at the man’s skin with his bare hands. There was nothing planned about that.”

“Very good, Will,” Hannibal’s voice was a rumble in the darkened room, “and where are you now?”

“Richard Breslin’s house,” Will replied automatically, “his husband was supposed to be out of town for two more days.”

“A shame,” Hannibal stood up as he spoke, the plastic suit he wore creaking, “that he decided to come home early. Mr. Manne-Breslin, you have my most sincere apologies.”

Will was aware of Anando moving. The man looked up at Hannibal and struggled to speak. Hannibal just shook his head, walking around the bed slowly, taking in the gorey mess that had been Richard Breslin. 

“This is no dream, this is really happening,” Will whispered to himself, sitting on his haunches, feeling one of Richard’s legs beneath him on the bed. He rubbed his bloodied hand over his face, “… then, they put a cloth over her face, and she sees the Pope in the darkness. He says she’s been bitten by a mouse, and she tells him that’s why she couldn’t come and see him. He reassures her that she’s forgiven, even while the devil is fucking her, then offers his ring with the tannis root in it for her to kiss.”

“What was that, Will?” Hannibal turned away from Anando to look at him. Will met his eyes, his uncomfortably predatory eyes and shuddered.

“Rosemary’s Baby,” he closes his eyes while he speaks, “she shares chocolate mousse from the neighbors with her husband, passes out… then there’s this scene of her drugged perceptions. Surrounded by cultists chanting, her neighbor saying that she won’t see or hear as long as she ate the ‘mouse’. Then there’s this…this rape scene.”

Hannibal tilted his head and pursed his lips slightly, “Does it help you to recall cinema right now, Will?”

“I feel like Rosemary,” Will shook his head and turned from Hannibal, back to the gore. Somehow, the gorey mess that used to be a human was more comfortable to look at than Hannibal. 

“What have you been impregnated with?” Hannibal seemed genuinely interested. Anando is forgotten. Will reached for the scalpel that he had dropped, and listened to himself laughing raggedly. 

“Madness?” Will was still laughing, “Hatred? Murder? No matter how I respond, it is going to sound cheesy. Ridiculous.”

He had Hannibal’s full attention now. The other man was fully turned towards him, hands clasped in front of himself as he leaned in towards Will just so slightly. Will laughed again, sitting more on his hip, more on the corpse, “And you’d be the devil, of course.”

“Of course,” Hannibal’s voice changed ever so slightly. Will understood what that slight change in tone meant. Hannibal was smirking at him. 

Will was still laughing. He moved off the bed, standing beside Hannibal, “Are you drugging me?”

“You know the answer to that question,” Hannibal looked at him closely, “I have been medicating you.”

“No…no, not medicating. Drugging. There’s a difference. It has to do with intention,” Will’s voiced had taken on a manic edge. He couldn’t control it, “Drugging is done with the intention of controlling, taking advantage. Nothing good comes of drugging. Medicating is done for the benefit of the person being medicated. And this. This is reality. This is no dream, this is really happening.”

“And what will you do, now that you are within reality?” Hannibal reached for Will’s arm. Latex squeaked against plastic. Will laughed again, grabbing Hannibal’s wrist.

“I’m taking control now,” he hissed, squeezing Hannibal’s wrist tightly, “I’m taking advantage.”


End file.
